What to expect from planting F1[?] bean seed

[ferdzy]

Okay, just finished sorting out my Anseloni's Bologna pole beans (thanks Holly!). I had a cross show up. Who's yer daddy? Go on, guess. Go on, go on, you'll never get it.

Oh, you got it.

Yep, it's Cherokee Trail of Tears again.

Hmmm.  Dude, I love you, but srsly? Can't you let some of the other beans have a go?

[flowerweaver]

CToT --stud muffin of the bean world.

[steev]

Fertilizing is a (happily) dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

[ferdzy]

I found 5 - count 'em, 5! - crosses in my beans this year. Four of them had Cherokee Trail of Tears as the pollen donor. What else is new. One of them is a repeat of the first cross I found, with Dolloff. Others are Octarora, Anseloni's Bologna, and one I forgot to keep track of. They were all pole beans though. I have not found any crosses in my bush beans up to now. I will grow out the Anseloni's cross, but probably not any of the others.



The last cross is different! Found it in my patch of Deseronto Potato Beans. The cross is a fair bit smaller. Which I usually wouldn't like, but I have been growing Deseronto long enough to know I have trouble getting them dry enough to store well. A smaller version, if it was reasonably productive, might be just the thing. I suspect the pollen parent is Blue Lake, but I did grow a couple other white beans so possibly not. Hopefully once I grow them out I will have a better idea.

When it comes to seed coat colour, plainly black trumps all, or at least that's what I've been seeing. Where does white show up in the scale? Is it possible the pollen parent is not a white bean but white is dominant?

[philagardener]

It will be interesting to see what you get next year. If all black again, I would wonder if some ToT seed got scattered about the garden and made it through the winter. Do you ever see any bean seedlings coming up in strange places?  Any crosses with a non-black seeded variety should start to segregate in the F2.

[ferdzy]

philagardener, the first time I have ever had a volunteer bean come up was this year. Two Arikara yellows in fact. But I've never seen a volunteer bean otherwise.

You can't really see from the photo, but they are plainly crosses. The Dolloff x CToT has a pattern to it almost, charcoal grey specks and black, and a Dolloff-like shape. The Octarora x CToT are the size of Octaroras - quite tiny. The Anseloni's Bologna x CToT are bigger and rounder than CToT, but smaller than Anseloni's Bologna.

[philagardener]

Next year should be really interesting then!